Stepping outside and looking around

It's been a hell of a busy January. First, this whole newsletter got moved to completely self-hosted infrastructure – and we didn't even miss a single post deadline! Then, I managed to host the 8th VNConf, the little gamedev conference for visual novel developers I've been running for as many years. Right now we're wrapping up with the final video editing to uploading to the internet. The new recordings should probably be viewable by the weekend.

What's amusing about me running that conference, which is the only one in existence for that specific genre of gaming, is that I haven't actively worked in that industry for a number of years now. I used to be a translator and occasional project manager, but haven't had the time for either what with having a kid and newsletter. I just still have a bunch of friendships and connections. So, why bother spending a month of time solo running a conference for an industry I don't even work on?

The primary reason is because I really enjoy seeing people sharing deep, passionate dives into what they find difficult and worth sharing with others about their work. It's people just like you and me overcoming daily issues and sharing what they learned. This year, I got to see someone showing tips on coding dynamic audio movement to go with their game, how to avoid scope creep, how to create dynamic characters, how to use simple animations to make scenes more engaging, how to handle simple contracts, and even how to write a mystery. These are all topics that I never even thought to think about, but someone else has put significant thought into. It's like cheat codes for experience!

While I'm the sort of nerd that loves grazing upon the knowledge of people outside my field, maybe you need a more tangible benefit before considering watching such things. I'm here to claim that watching people talk about how they solved interesting problems in their field can often give useful hints on how to solve interesting problems within our own work. And the reason such connections exist is because a lot of problems in any industry are not technical problems that are unique to that endeavor – a lot of the problems that need solving are simply human problems.

For example, this year we had a talk about managing the scope of your work. It's written specifically about game development, so there's talk about planning for coding features, artwork, audio, UI work, etc.. But how many people in this world don't face problems with keeping their project scope in control? I'm sure you've put some thought into how to minimize scope creep. If nothing else, watching other people struggle and solve scope creep problems that are wholly different from yours can help put things in perspective. When we cut scope on a data warehouse project, it's usually a relief because we're just rejecting a request from some team. When someone is cutting scope on a book or game they're building, that's akin to chopping a limb off a creative darling.

Or take this past talk about communicating directions to a voice director so you can get the voice acting you envisioned. I don't think I'll ever have to hire an actor to read out one of my reports (🤔🤔🤔). But peel back the surface topic and it's about trusting and working through skilled people in order to get the results you want. Communication is hard, doubly so when you're trying to express some artistic vision in your head. Then there's the whole process of watching things turn out differently from the way you envisioned because it took on a life of its own – what do you do then? Do you freak out? Order retakes? Roll with it? Some mix of everything?

But I also don't think it's necessary to host your own event in order to get this sort of knowledge. There are other, bigger, venues for similar content. GDC is a much bigger, more mainstream conference that has a wide array of talks, and you can scan their recent stuff to see if there's things that sorta smell relevant. Honestly if you weren't paying close attention, many of the talks would be pretty relevant to a tech business conference. For example, a talk from one studio about how they handle their community is probably relevant to all sorts of functions.

But outside of tech and video games (which shares in tech's culture of sharing experiences)... I don't see much in the way of a conference culture that makes it easy for outsiders to peek into without committing a ton of time joining the community. Academics obviously has publications and conferences, but it's not productive to just barge into since it's not designed for rando outsiders. A lot of other professions hold conferences and trade shows that probably do hold interesting things that we could learn from, but they rarely post their stuff online for others to see.

As an example of my frustration, I figured SEO marketing and analytics might have some topics I may find interesting... but finding talks from major conferences in that space is a nightmare because almost everything are paid events with 3,4-figure ticket prices. The conference circuit is a whole industry unto itself and no one was posting any talk of substance for free.

Meanwhile, there's lots of crafts related educational video content available, for example I watch a bit too much stuff around working with wood, metal, and other tools... but tutorials and build videos are a usually different from professionals talking about the things they find hard, mistakes they've made, and other "ugly" topics.

So I guess I'm mostly complaining here that I want to see how more fields approach how they do work and I can't find good places to observe! Games can't possibly be the only other place I can watch sausage being made. If anyone knows of any fun "non-tech" conferences that regularly publish talks online, point me at them! Please!

Otherwise... anyone want to help plan a conference?

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About this newsletter

I’m Randy Au, Quantitative UX researcher, former data analyst, and general-purpose data and tech nerd. Counting Stuff is a weekly newsletter about the less-than-sexy aspects of data science, UX research and tech. With some excursions into other fun topics.

All photos/drawings used are taken/created by Randy unless otherwise credited.

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